Regular readers will know my animosity towrds the saccarine neo-fascist state called Singapore. Western gourists love it because they can tell all their friends they've been to Asia without ever leaving the safety of their nanny security state.
KL is a rubber stamp of that grotesque place. From the same damn plastic money that won't fold, to the painfully clean streets and clockwork traffic, KL is as bland and unthreatening as Ohio.
Oh sure, there are the Petronas towers and the dancing water show, which to me are just more ant piles and attempts at a cultural life, to be found in any major metropolis near you.
Hell, even the gobs of palm oil plantatioms passed on the endless journey from the airport to city centre look like Disney-fied versioms of jungle. Even the colors seem carefully chosen by Imagineers to be painfully unthreatening.
We're here on business, and lest you think that affects my perceptions, disabuse yourself of the notion. I spent three months in deep jungle on business and had the survivalist wetdream. The experience would have scared the hell out of those pretenders on that survival 'reality' show I never watched. So, I am ready for about anything on business trips...
Except more of this bland Western imperialistic crap that passes for much of Asian culture anymore.
Perhaps this is what the Visigoths felt when they finally got fed up and sacked Rome. They just couldn't take any more of those damn coliseums and vomitoriums. Probably because they came with those damn Roman legions groping you at the door.
Anyway, back to KL.
I'm here to tour the national theater and look in on the rigging system before it ships. Four days at the Hangingtree hotel in a rubber-stamped room over a consumer orgy called a mall. I can't even bring myself to buy the usual refridgerator magnet because it looks just like the one fron Singapore. The only difference is it, like all the tourist crack here, has two ant piles on it. At least Singapore has their nifty little seahorse-lion logo. It's the only thing that distinguishes it from all the other imperial strongholds of the world.
One thing here feels like home. Even though the roads are in good repair and there's almost no traffic - wildly different from Jakarta-there' not one damn right angle to be found. So it takes for-freakin'-ever to go anywhere. You have go jump down, gurn around and pick a bale cotton just to cross the bloody street.
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| Food, bed...doggie style? |
Hell, Facebook won't even let me log on because I'm not in my usual cubby hole. I hate when corporations try to nanny me. I'll watch after myself, Mark Zuckerburg. Get the f¥£k out of my business! Like FaceBook is so dzmned important I can only log on from my home country?! Worried that someone won't get tagged correctly, or what?
Oh yeah, back to KL...what do you call someone from here? Oompa-loompa?
